Goytisolo represents much that is typical of the new writers in his interpretation of a Spain haunted by its Civil War memories and subjected to a political and religious censorship. (p. 22)

His novels, in their effort to define the contemporary Spaniard, extract incidents from his own experience. Even though he claims that a complete realism is impossible, that absolute truths are difficult to accept and that a real novelist must accept various possibilities, in his novels he traces the development of his generation from youth to maturity as he describes the adolescent misery, part self-aggrandizement and partially self-disparagement, and the weakness and strengths, such as they are, which are part of the fabric of Spanish society. Constantly, in his novels, the theme is one of contrast between the world of reality and the fairy tale world of make-believe, of innocence and fable. His characters seek escape from their...